Iraq Dismisses 1,300 After Basra Offensive

By STEPHEN FARRELL

BAGHDAD — The Iraqi government announced Sunday that it had dismissed 1,300 soldiers and policemen for refusing to fight or performing badly during last month’s offensive against Shiite militias in the southern city of Basra.

Maj. Gen. Abdul-Kareem Khalaf, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said that 500 soldiers and 421 policemen were fired in Basra, including 37 senior police officers up to the rank of Brigadier General. Police officials said the remainder were fired in Kut, where fighting also spread.

“Some of them were sympathetic with these lawbreakers, some refused to battle for political or national or sectarian or religious reasons,” General Khalaf said in Basra.

The dismissals were an implicit admission of failures during the government offensive, which was widely criticized as being poorly planned. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s forces failed to disarm Shiite militias, in particular the Mahdi Army militia loyal to the cleric Moktada al-Sadr. However, they claim to have restored order to the streets, and the nearby ports vital to Iraq’s oil industry.

American officials, who praised the Iraqi forces’ progress in being able to move 6,600 reinforcements south to Basra so quickly, conceded that they had not been fully consulted in advance.

The Basra clashes pitched the country’s two most powerful Shiite forces against each other — the Mahdi Army and the government security forces dominated by Mr. Sadr’s most powerful internal Shiite rival, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.

On April 3, Mr. Maliki promised to dismiss and prosecute the worst offenders among the more than 1,000 who deserted, laid down their weapons or refused to fight against their fellow Shiites and tribesmen. At the time one of his senior officials acknowledged that fear of the militias was a principal factor. “One of the main reasons is that they felt the other party was too strong, and too courageous and they couldn’t confront them,” he said.

Putting further political pressure on Mr. Sadr, Ali al-Dabbagh, an Iraqi government spokesman, said Sunday that the cabinet had agreed on a draft law that would ban any party from taking part in the October provincial elections unless they disband their militias. But it was unclear how much effect any law could have, given that the two dominant Shiite parties in government — the Sadrists and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq — are both closely affiliated with their armed wings.

In Baghdad, the Mahdi Army’s Sadr City stronghold was reported to be quieter on Sunday, after a week of heavy clashes with Iraqi government and American troops.

The Iraqi and American forces have taken control of southern neighborhoods in an effort to deprive the Mahdi Army of areas from which it can fire rockets and mortars at Baghdad’s high-security Green Zone three miles to the west.